A federal judge in Boston dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Trump administration against Harvard University on Thursday. The legal challenge alleged that the school failed to address antisemitism during various pro-Palestinian demonstrations on its campus.
District Judge Richard Stearns concluded that the government failed to provide adequate evidence that Harvard violated the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on factors such as race or nationality. In its March filing, the Department of Justice claimed that university leadership ignored discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students, citing incidents where demonstrators occupied libraries and maintained encampments in defiance of school policy.
However, Judge Stearns determined that the specific events cited by the administration were too infrequent and episodic to establish a pattern of noncompliance. This ruling serves as a setback to the Trump administration’s broader efforts to penalize elite universities it accuses of harboring bias against Israel.
Previously, the administration attempted to withhold significant federal funding from Harvard due to these allegations, but a separate federal ruling last September declared that action largely unlawful and mandated the restoration of those funds.
